Meiki, Muisti, Memoria
by Empatheia
Summary: [Kyouya x Haruhi] There are no coincidences, and eight years is not long enough to kill a memory.


**A/N: **April flashfic for **3goodtimes**. Instead of doctor!Haruhi like _Query_, this time you get doctor!Kyouya. Do enjoy.

Eia

**xxxx**

_**Meiki, Muisti, Memoria**_

**xxxx**

"Well, that's the last of them," he said, and closed the car door.

It made a little sound, a soft click that was indistinguishable from the sound of finality. The boxes were going to obscure his rear-view mirror. It would be risky driving like that.

Eight years of exhausting study, hundreds of nights with minimal sleep, thousands of cups of strong, acrid coffee, and one complete inuring to blood and gore later, he was finally allowed to introduce himself with letters behind his name. It seemed almost anti-climactic, the little framed and bubbled-wrapped certificate sitting on the front seat. It didn't accurately reflect the gallons of elbow-grease that had gone into achieving it, or the total commitment it had required, but it almost made him smile to look at it.

Ohtori Kyouya, MD. Doctor to the famously rich and richly famous.

The decades stretched in front of him, gleaming coldly with money-light. He was already wealthy. This would make him influential. He wasn't sure yet why it was important that he be influential, but the hunch was powerful enough to propel him through every day of medical school, and so he thought he had better listen to it.

Ohtori Kyouya, MD. Ohtori-sensei.

It sounded like someone else's name. He missed having people call him Kyouya. Hardly anyone did nowadays. They call him Ohtori-kun, or Ohtori-senpai, or variations thereof. He hated it.

_Kyouya-senpai!_

He closed his eyes. It was dark. Maybe he should go inside and lie down on the couch and wait for morning. It would be hard to sleep in the strange emptiness of the room that had been his home for so long, but at the very least he could rest his eyes.

It was a good idea. He locked the car door and turned to go back inside for the last time.

Behind him, an engine sputtered as it slowed and gravel crunched. He turned with an automatic frown. It was a day too early for the new renter to be here, and he wasn't ready to leave yet. It was already dark, and the drive to Kyoto was too long to risk at night, especially with no rear-view.

The car, an elderly yellow Nissan, coughed and petered out as though it had fainted and not merely been turned off. A slight figure tidily dressed in tan and modest green unfolded from it and pushed a slightly ragged mop of brown hair off a pale forehead. The figure, not quite clear in the dim lights half-illuminating the driveway, paused upon spotting Kyouya and folded arms across a thin, flattish chest. "I'm sorry," the figure said, revealing herself to be of the female persuasion. "In the letter it said I could move in on the first. Was that incorrect?"

The voice niggled at his mind, saying _you should know me_ teasingly. He just couldn't place it. Must be the context.

"Yes," he said bluntly but not rudely. "I was told I had until the second to vacate. I'm sorry, but I can't leave tonight. It's too late to drive all the way to Kyoto."

"I understand," the woman said ruefully, and sighed tiredly. "I'll go find a motel, I'm sure there's one close by."

The niggling feeling become more insistent, banging at his brain with little blunt pickhammers. It was bloody irritating. Kyouya hated puzzles. "Do I know you?" he blurted, instantly feeling like an idiot.

The woman paused and presumably furrowed her brow, then stepped forwards. "You seem familiar," she admitted, "but I can't see anything in this gloom."

"Come inside," he said reluctantly. He was sure this would lead to him offering her the couch for the night, and he would be forced to sleep on the floor. Curiosity was the bane of his life.

She locked the car and followed him up three flights of stairs to reach his flat. Once inside, he flicked on the light and turned to have a good look at her.

Strangely enough, though he had always prided himself on his memory for faces, it was her who caught on first. She gaped, then began to laugh freely and loudly, pressing a hand to her forehead. "No way," she said with something suspiciously close to a giggle. "No _way!"_

It was utterly maddening that he couldn't put a name to this wonderfully familiar heart-shaped face and those eyes that seemed to have known him forever. He knew this woman, and she obviously knew him.

"Kyouya-senpai," she said then with a helpless, overjoyed smile, and stepped forward to envelop him in a gentle hug.

Memory came crashing in on him. Sure, it had been eight years, but he still felt like a consummate dimwit for somehow managing to forget her even this much. She'd meant so much to him that time, and to everyone else in their little band of brothers, Tamaki especially. Tamaki wouldn't have forgotten her. Kyouya felt like a heel.

"Haruhi," he whispered into her hair, and hugged her back. She was even thinner than he was. He wondered what she'd been doing all this time that would leave her so emaciated, and resolved to inquire and apply his knowledge of diet and vitamins to make up a plan for her that would bring her back to full blossoming health. What better first official patient could there be?

"So you do remember me! I'm so glad," she said, and obviously _meant_ it.

"This is a very odd coincidences," he noted observantly.

"There are no coincidences," she told his chest confidently. "That's something I've learned over the past eight years. Speaking of which, we have a lot to catch up on! I want to hear about what you've been doing since we graduated, in detail."

Kyouya winced. Chatting was definitely not one of his strong points, and the Haruhi he remember hadn't been much of a fan of it either. She'd changed, apparently, but it wasn't like he could say that he hadn't.

Then, as she had been wont to do during their years together in school, she turned the tables on him. "Actually, never mind. I know you don't like talking much, and I don't really feel like it either. Do you have some tea?"

He nodded gratefully and made her tea, which they drank in companionable silence while sneaking covert assessing glances at each other.

Haruhi had not grown up to become truly beautiful, in the classical way at least. She was a little on the androgynous side even now, easy to mistake for an effeminate man except for her slight breasts and her feminine eyes. Her lips were still balanced on the happy medium between full and thin, not really either but still attractively shaped. Her hair had obviously not seen a dresser for several months, and it flopped haphazardly across her shoulders and curled around her face almost protectively.

No, she wasn't beautiful, but he still felt his fingers remembering their old desire to touch her.

They spoke sparsely, but learned the important things-- Kyouya was a doctor now, and Haruhi was already a highly sought-after paralegal. Her unflinching calm in the face of the worst pressures and talent for mediation and compromise had already gained her some measure of fame and the nickname 'Willow,' for her ability to bend without being weak.

Then, once the important things had been communicated, they fell easily into silence and drank a second cup of tea together.

He watched her finger trace the delicate edge of the celadon cup-- nothing but the best for her son, his mother had said-- and knew he was most likely in a great deal of trouble.

Childhood was far behind him. He was no longer so oblivious as to misunderstand his own reactions, as he had been in high school with her. He watched her finger slowly, thoughtlessly circle the pale green rim and felt his mouth go dry. Physical beauty did not interest him, being akin to desiring a cardboard doll in his mind. The things that did interest him were-- in short-- everything that Haruhi had been when he'd known her in high school. Quiet without being self-conscious, intelligent, kind to a fault, and strong without being inflexible.

It seemed that neither of them had really changed at all-- she was still all of those things, and he was still interested.

"I'm going to go grab some stuff out of the car to sleep on," she told him with a smile, and walked out.

Kyouya leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. It was not going to be a comfortable night.

She returned five minutes later, almost completely hidden behind an entire futon-- where had she hidden that in her decrepit, low-roofed car?-- and a mountain of blankets and pillows. She told him sheepishly that it was the one luxury she let herself indulge in while arranging the creamy pile into something resembling a bed. It was a respectful distance from the couch, but he still felt compelled to either move it closer or move it to the far end of the kitchen. Neither would really help him at all, so he shrugged and let it be.

One way or another, he was going to suffer tonight, so it didn't really matter how many insignificant meters there were between them.

It had been three years since his last pathetic attempt at a relationship. Nine hundred and forty-seven days of celibacy, if he calculated quickly. It had been more a matter of conserving time and effort for school than lack of interest, but either way, three years was a terribly long time for a man in his twenties. Even for Kyouya, who had been nicknamed the Snow Prince by the women of his class for his steadfast refusal to get involved in anything that would distract him from his studies.

It was a blessing of sorts that Haruhi hadn't shown up earlier. She personified distraction just by existing.

He could hear her changing in the bathroom. He tried not to listen, but it was a very long five minutes before she emerged, face gleaming and dressed in thin yellow pajamas.

"Well... good night, Kyouya-senpai," she said, smiling at him in that gentle way of hers that made him feel nostalgic and something else simultaneously.

"Good night... Haruhi," he said, with a slight falter in his voice that he fervently hoped she hadn't noticed.

She burrowed into her blankets, expelled a great sigh, and seemed to fall instantly asleep.

He changed and crawled onto the couch awkwardly, missing his bed and knocked completely off balance by the presence of Someone Else in the room. Especially since that someone was Haruhi. How was he supposed to sleep with her even breathing echoing through his ears and the smell of her lavender soap curling in his nostrils?

Simply put, he couldn't.

So instead, Kyouya lay awake and listened to her breathe, wishing he'd just ignored his own mind and let her find a hotel without ever learning who she was. Of course it was much too late, but the wishing kept his mind occupied just enough to make waiting for the sunrise tolerable.

xxxx

It worked for about two hours. The moon arced across the sky and came to rest in his kitchen window, pouring across the floor to light on the huddled lump that was Haruhi. Her face was turned towards him. The moonlight showed him the frown and the furrowed brows that made up her face, and he felt his resolve waver hazardously.

Then she whimpered and tightened her fingers into the white billowing expanse of her comforter, and he admitted defeat at last.

"Haruhi," he whispered cautiously, sliding off the couch to come to rest on his knees beside her on the floor. "Haruhi, are you all right?"

She moaned softly and turned over. A silver tear track blazed for a moment as she passed through the beam of light from the window, then winked out as her face came into shadow again.

Kyouya was a very rational man. He never let emotion make any decisions for him, believing that choices made from the heart alone could only lead to oceans of regret later. However, he was having a very hard time rationalizing away the impulse bludgeoning him now.

A moment later, Haruhi made the decision for him by crying out softly and curling in on herself, shaking faintly. He didn't know what nightmare she was seeing, but he knew well enough that he didn't have the willpower _not_ to comfort her.

He lifted the comforter-- feather, he noted with distant approval-- and pulled himself in until he was pressed against her back and could feel her shaking. His arms moved on their own to slide around and under her and draw her into the protective cocoon of his body.

Her trembling eased almost instantly, and she sighed with relief.

Kyouya breathed in her hair and wished a little more, at peace with the realization that it was futile to resist.

He realized, slowly, that he had pushed her determinedly out of his mind each day since starting university, unwilling to deal with the distraction. The forgetting was the result of the concerted effort of eight years combined, and not a failure on his part as he'd thought at first. It had been almost a project of sorts to forget her, and it had been resoundingly successful.

That is... up until the moment she appeared at his doorstep, early but not unwelcome. Never that.

Her hair smelled of wisteria and freesia, and blended sweetly with the lavender soap she used on her skin. Kyouya spent the next half hour just inhaling and savouring every breath.

The next six hours he spent sleeping. He missed the moment when he fell asleep, being lost between the world of moonbeams and violet scents and the harsher waking one of cold coins and colder logic. When the dreams came, they were blurred and hard to make sense of, but had to do with sunlit maze-gardens and roses and upturned faces soft with understanding smiles.

xxxx

When morning came, he didn't wake with the sun for the first time in many months. It took a grinning Haruhi persistently shaking him to draw him back into the world of the living, and even then he felt pleasantly drowsy, as though all was right with the world and there was no reason to move.

"I'm going to borrow your shower," Haruhi told him, then stood up and left him curling around a pile of nothing in the bed and wondering muzzily where the warm, delightful body had gone.

Then it hit him that the warm, delightful body was in his _shower_, and by logical progression it was easy to deduce that it was probably naked at well. That was a thought that had him up and making breakfast with the meager remnants left in the fridge with impressive speed. The sizzle of the mackerel in the pan nearly drowned out the sound of water coursing over skin, enough to keep Kyouya rational and functional until the water stopped.

Haruhi emerged from the bathroom contentedly toweling her hair and glowing with freshly-scrubbed cleanliness. "Thank you," she said happily, then inhaled deeply. "That smells wonderful."

Kyouya opted not to speak, instead shoveling a mackerel off onto a plate for her and flopping a piece of toast and some leftover vegetables next to it. "Sorry it's a bit odd, most of the food is packed in my car already," he said apologetically.

"No, it's fine," Haruhi told him, and it was easy to see that she meant it. "Thank you!" She attacked the food then like a starving woman, shoveling it down her throat as if it was the first she'd eaten in days.

Kyouya remembered suddenly that he was worried about her. For the next hour he grilled her mercilessly on her eating habits, exercise habits, work habits and study habits, until she was glaring at him and obviously annoyed. Then he apologized and admitted that he was only worried, and her annoyance broke like a dam and she gifted him with another smile.

It was time to get going, he knew. If he wanted to get to Kyoto with enough time to unpack his car before it got dark, he should really start driving as soon as possible.

He just couldn't seem to drag himself away from the table that had Haruhi sitting at it.

"I should go," he said, mostly to himself, but loud enough for her to catch.

"No, you shouldn't," she said candidly and unexpectedly, and stood up to do the dishes without another word of explanation.

Kyouya was a logical man. It didn't take a genius to deduce what her meaning might have been, and he was far smarter than the average man.

He crossed the kitchen floor until he stood behind her. She was quietly cleaning their plates under the stream of running water, and apparently pretending he didn't exist. Her breathing was shallow and halting.

It was time to make a decision. This was something Kyouya was very good at. Within a few moments, he'd calculated the pros and cons of each path before him, and one had clearly distinguished itself as the superior option.

With two long, unhesitating steps, he crossed the kitchen floor and pressed himself to Haruhi's back, catching her forearms in his hands and pulling her hands out of the water and into her chest so that he could wrap himself around her fully. He was not a solidly built man, but she was so much smaller than him even now. There was enough of him to shield her completely.

"Kyouya-senpai," she whispered, not sounding the least bit surprised, and sounding considerably...

Why couldn't he put a name to the emotion in her voice?

"You're making it very hard to leave," he informed her without malice. "It's been a very long time since anyone's called me by name."

She turned in his arms and reached up to clasp his face in soap-bubbled hands, holding his gaze steadily and not smiling for once. "Kyouya," she said then, leaving off the honourific and simply saying his name as it was. Then she took hold of his hair and pulled him insistently downwards until his mouth collided gently with hers.

He lost himself for a moment, collapsing inwards around her while an alarming wave of vertigo swamped him. She met him gladly, sliding one arm around his neck and pulling his glasses carefully off his face with the other.

Without his glasses, her face just appeared as a soft oval of cream framed by blurry chocolate strands. "Stay here for today," she said.

Trying to say no was like trying to tell a river not to flow. The only logical course of action was to give up, and so that was what he did.

xxxx

There is a saying that all moments in time are just facets of one eternal moment.

If that was so, then all days are really just one day, and 'stay here for today' could easily also mean 'stay for all days.'

Kyouya was far from a philosophical man, but he didn't mind it if it gave him an excuse for continuing to Not Leave. The first day became two, then three, then a week. The week turned into two weeks, then a month. That month turned into two, then six, then a year.

From there it was only reasonable to start counting in forevers.

And so, being a reasonable man, Kyouya did.

**XxxxxxxxxxxxX**

**A/N: **I want a Kyouya.

...That is all.


End file.
